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Tuesday, July 31, 2018

We like to pay special attention to gifts to UCLA that don't involve bricks-and-mortar construction projects. Here is one:

The UCLA College humanities division has received its largest ever gift — and one of the largest ever to any university philosophy department: $25 million in honor of two longtime UCLA faculty members.Of the total, $20 million will support the philosophy department; the other $5 million will provide seed funding to create a planned $15 million endowment to provide financial support for graduate students in the humanities division.Jordan Kaplan, his wife, Christine, and Jordan’s longtime business partner, Ken Panzer, made the gift in honor of Jordan’s parents, Renée and David Kaplan — each of whom has been a member of the UCLA faculty for almost 60 years — and to recognize his father’s contributions to the study of philosophy.In recognition of the gift, UCLA’s Humanities Building will be renamed Renée and David Kaplan Hall.“This extraordinary gift signals a new era for the humanities at UCLA and, in particular, for philosophy,” said UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. “It’s more important than ever to instill in our students the philosophical perspective that helps make sense of today’s complex societal challenges.”Jordan Kaplan is the CEO and president of Douglas Emmett Inc., a real estate investment trust. David Kaplan is a renowned scholar of philosophical logic and the philosophy of language, and Renée Kaplan was a clinical professor of psychology and the director of training at UCLA Student Psychological Services. Both Renée and David earned doctorates at UCLA.“We are proud to participate in UCLA’s Centennial Campaign and be able to meaningfully support Humanities and Philosophy, areas of study that we feel are particularly important now to the health of our modern society,” Jordan Kaplan said. “Our hope is that this gift will encourage others to recognize the importance of these departments and join us in providing them with very much needed support.”The gift, the second largest made to the UCLA College during the ongoing Centennial Campaign for UCLA, comes two years after Renée, David, Jordan and Christine Kaplan donated funds to establish the Presidential Professor of Philosophy endowed chair.The new gift will help the humanities division and philosophy department recruit and retain top faculty, and attract the most outstanding graduate students.“We are deeply grateful for this inspirational gift from Christine and Jordan Kaplan and Ken Panzer,” said Scott Waugh, UCLA’s executive vice chancellor and provost. “It demonstrates not only their commitment to advancing the excellence of the humanities and our study of philosophy, but also their confidence in UCLA’s academic mission as we enter our second century.”The study of philosophy has been a cornerstone of the humanities at UCLA since the campus’ founding in 1919; an endowed chair in philosophy that was established in 1928 was the first in UCLA’s history. Among the department’s current faculty are recipients of Mellon and Guggenheim fellowships and National Science Foundation grants, and members of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Council of Learned Societies. UCLA doctoral graduates in philosophy have gone on to teach at the most preeminent universities around the world.“This gift will help make our department of philosophy the bellwether for departments of its kind around the world,” said David Schaberg, dean of the humanities division. “Especially valuable is the opportunity to build a $15 million endowment for graduate students in the humanities on the basis of the generous matching fund the gift creates.”Professor Seana Shiffrin, chair of the philosophy department, said the gift will be transformative for the future of the department.“Philosophical issues touch on every aspect of life — including issues about what sort of creatures we are and could become, what we can know of ourselves and others, how we should treat one another, whether we are capable of forming a better society and what that would look like, and the significance of our mortality,” she said. “A philosophy education introduces students to captivating ideas and perennial questions while imparting crucial skills of analysis, argumentation, clarity, and precision. “In its capacity both to stimulate and to discipline the imagination, training in philosophy empowers students to enter any career, while enriching their entire lives by opening up new avenues of thought and fresh possibilities for living.”The gift is part of the UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2019, during UCLA’s 100th anniversary year.

Monday, July 30, 2018

As the chart above shows, the population of California has more than doubled since the days of the 1960 Master Plan.* UCLA has become notorious for being hard to get into. What was UCLA's undergraduate enrollment back then? Yours truly poked around on the web and it turns out getting data on that issue takes some doing. I ended up looking at the Master Plan itself. That document gives data on the entire UC System as it was in 1958 and on total student enrollment. You never find undergraduates-only by campus. But with some estimating, it appears that UCLA probably had about 11-12,000 undergrads at most. It now has around 31,000 undergrads, so the undergrad population has come close to tripling. In short, UCLA undergraduate enrollment has outpaced overall population growth. Now, you would have to look at college-age population rather than total to get a more legitimate comparison. And you might want to look at the comparative growth of northern vs. southern California. And there is the sensitive issue of out-of-state admissions. But putting it all together suggests (to me, at least) that what has happened over the long-term is that a) more folks out of the general population want to go to college than was the case circa 1960, and b) UCLA's reputation as a desirable university to attend has gone up. If anyone out there has more to say about this matter, please add a comment.

Saturday, July 28, 2018

As in the past, UCLA plans to observe a Winter Holiday Closure during the 2018-2019 holiday season. This annual closure is a highly effective approach to power conservation for a specific period of time and has allowed UCLA to achieve significant energy savings.

It is proposed that the campus close for 11 days between Saturday, December 22, 2018, and Tuesday, January 1, 2019, with plans to reopen on Wednesday, January 2, 2019. This period includes four University paid holidays (December 24, 25, 31, 2018, and January 1, 2019). This year, three days (December 26, 27 and 28, 2018) are not paid holidays.

Staff employees and those academic employees who accrue vacation leave will need to use either vacation, compensatory time (if available), or leave without pay to compensate for these three work days.

For exclusively represented employees, labor contracts may include similar provisions, and requirements under the Higher Education Employer-Employee Relations Act will be observed...

Thursday, July 26, 2018

When UCLA officials in 2014 announced a $4.2 billion fundraising campaign, the university hoped it would reach the goal by the end of 2019. But the university announced Wednesday it has already reached the milestone, 18 months ahead of schedule."The support we have seen for UCLA during this campaign has been deeply inspiring and a testament to the great value our university brings to people locally and globally," UCLA Chancellor Gene Block said in a statement released by the university. "It also shows the confidence that people and foundations have in our students, staff, faculty and alumni to drive discovery, innovation, education and service."The fundraising effort -- the Centennial Campaign for UCLA -- will continue despite already meeting its goal.University officials said more than 58,000 donors contributed to the campaign during 2017-18, and 95 percent of the donations were less than $10,000. UCLA received 109 gifts of $1 million or more.Among the most notable donations were:

$100 million from music mogul David Geffen to establish the Geffen Academy at UCLA, and an additional $100 million from Geffen to establish scholarships for medical students at the Geffen School of Medicine;

a total of $109 million by UCLA graduates Renee and Meyer Luskin, including funds for the UCLA Renee and Meyer Luskin Conference Center;

more than $50 million in total gifts from Henry and Susan Samueli;

$20 million from the Parker Institute for Cancer Immunotherapy;

$100 million from philanthropist Marion Anderson, whose late husband John is the namesake of the UCLA Anderson School of Management; and

more than $4 million from "The Big Bang Theory" co-creator Chuck Lorre and the show's cast and crew to establish scholarships for students studying science, technology, engineering and math.

Wednesday, July 25, 2018

California soon may be first state to require public universities to offer abortion pills

Elizabeth Castillo, CALmatters, 7-24-18

Jessica Rosales recalls plunging into a downward spiral after discovering that her birth control had failed and she was pregnant. A financially unstable third-year student at UC Riverside, she immediately sought an abortion —something the campus student health clinic did not provide.Instead she was referred to private medical facilities off campus. One wouldn’t accept her insurance; the other didn’t provide abortions. Her grades slipped, she said, and she frequently slept the days away to escape her circumstances. Eventually she traveled six miles to a Planned Parenthood clinic that performed the procedure. Ten weeks had passed.“My situation could have been avoided if the student health center was there and provided medication abortion for students on campus,” Rosales said.A bill advancing in the Legislature would make California the first in the nation to require that abortion pills be available at on-campus health centers. The legislation, which has passed the Senate and is advancing in the Assembly, would mandate that all California State University and University of California campuses make the prescription abortion drug RU 486 available at their on-campus student health centers by Jan. 1, 2022.Funding, at least for the first year, would be provided not by taxpayers but by donations from a private foundation.Advocates say making the drug available on campus is an essential part of guaranteeing access and ensuring that college women are able to terminate a pregnancy, if and when they choose. “It’s necessary because it’s a constitutionally protected right, but just because it’s a constitutionally protected right does not mean you have access,” said state Sen. Connie Leyva, the Chino Democrat who authored the bill.But opponents say the proposed law is a solution in search of a problem, and that it could endanger women’s health and potentially saddle public universities with additional ongoing costs. They note that campus health centers currently refer students to off-campus abortion providers, and that UC and CSU campuses are located an average of less than 6 miles from such facilities.“The abortion industry strategically places their facilities close to young women, that demographic, and of course close to universities,” said Anna Arend, Northern California regional coordinator of Students for Life of America, which opposes the bill. “There really is no issue of access. It’s a made-up problem.”Still, some campuses have more access than others. While UC Santa Cruz is located 2 miles away from a Planned Parenthood clinic providing abortion services, UC Davis is over 11 miles away from such a clinic. San Diego State is located just 1 mile away from a clinic, but CSU Stanislaus is located over 14 miles away from one. For students without a car, like Rosales, that can add up to hours on public transit.Campus health centers provide students a wide range of services: immunizations, contraception, mental health services, x-rays, dental and optical services among them. Exact services offered vary by campus—some offer IUD insertions, for example, while others do not. They do not, for example, offer childbirthing services.Adiba Khan, a campus organizer with the foundation, said she helped launch the effort to pass the bill after several of her classmates at UC Berkeley experienced difficulty obtaining abortion pills during the first 10 weeks of pregnancy.After that, a pill is no longer an option—abortion would require a more medically invasive procedure, such as a suction method. The bill would require campuses to make abortion pills, but not more involved procedures, available.“Most people don’t find out that they’re pregnant until five, six weeks in, so that’s a really short time crunch,” said Khan, adding that it’s not unusual for students to have to wait a week or more for a health center appointment“Students at UCLA and Berkeley still experience a bad time so just imagine students who are in more secluded areas,” she said. “They have to go through an insane battle to be able to get an abortion.”The CSU and UC system haven’t taken a position on the bill, but both systems want to ensure that adding abortion pill services wouldn’t ultimately raise student fees, which provide the primary funding for campus health centers.The Women’s Foundation of California has secured up to $20 million in private start-up money for the first year from prominent health advocacy groups and anonymous donors. The foundation, which says it focuses on gender, racial, and economic justice, maintains that one year of funding at $200,000 per campus, along with an additional $200,000 each to the UC and CSU systems, will be more than enough to cover costs.Some lawmakers question what happens once the initial funding runs out.During a hearing of the Assembly Health Committee, Madera Republican Assemblyman Frank Bigelow said he wanted to guarantee that schools wouldn’t be forced to use money from campus general funds or other student fees to pay for abortions. “I would hope that you would look at further refining so that we limit that complete ability for them to use the public-sector funds,” Bigelow told Leyva.Leyva explained that some of the startup money would be used to teach campus health centers prescribing the pills how to bill health insurers—including private health plans, campus student health insurance programs and Medi-Cal, for the poorest students. By the second year, she contends, campuses will be able to use such reimbursements to fully cover their costs to provide abortion pills.

Sunday, July 22, 2018

We have noted in past blog posts that retiree health benefits turned out not to be on the agenda of the Regents' July meetings, now concluded. At one time, it appeared that the July meeting might be the scene of significant changes. Recall also that a year ago, an item on retiree health did appear on the Regents' agenda, but was then removed after an outcry from the Senate that there had been no advance consultation.

The upshot was that a special working group was formed to look at retiree health and come up with recommendations. As it turned out, the timing was too late for the July Regents meeting. But the working group has now issued a report, the UC prez has read it, and she has endorsed the recommendations, one of which is that there will be no major changes in 2019. The group will continue to deliberate.

Below you will find a link to the report and below that you will find the response and endorsement of the UC prez:

Saturday, July 21, 2018

Five years ago, this blog published an audio recording of a TV interview with then-Assembly Speaker John Pérez on the appointment of Janet Napolitano as president of UC. Below is a link to that recording:

For those who don't know, Royce Hall at UCLA is named after Josiah Royce, an early historian of California and philosopher. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/royce/ The only copy of the debates of the original 1849 constitutional convention for California that is on the web turns out to be a scan of Royce's copy of the book:

Friday, July 20, 2018

We again preserve the audio of yesterday's Regents meeting, since the Regents "archive" their recordings for only one year. The Thursday meeting is described below. Probably, the most noted element was the $60 cut in tuition. That $60 was the result of an earlier surcharge imposed when the Regents lost a lawsuit involving a tuition increase and had to refund the overage. Apart from its financial rationale, it sent an implicit message to students. Sue us successfully and other students will pay. So current students should think twice about supporting such suits by earlier cohorts. No one said it quite so bluntly, of course.

The Daily Cal has a summary of the Thursday meeting below. Below that is a link to the audio.

The UC Board of Regents convened Thursday at UCSF Mission Bay to discuss the 2018-19 budget plan and other aspects of the university that pertain to student life.At its morning meeting, the board approved the university’s revised 2018-19 budget plan, which indicates increases in state funding, maintains the student service fee at its current rate and reduces tuition by $60.“I hope and I pray that it is the first of a new trend,” said Regent Sherry Lansing at the meeting.According to a UC Office of the President press release, the new tuition — reduced from $11,502 to $11,442 — is a result of the university recovering almost all the damages from two class-action lawsuits by fall 2018: Kashmiri v. Regents and Luquetta v. Regents. These lawsuits were filed because students claimed that the university increased their tuition without adequate notice. Ultimately, the litigation process cost the university $100 million.Judith Gutierrez, president of the UC Student Association, expressed her support for the tuition reduction.“As we move into the new year, I hope you are already thinking about how we can proactively build towards budget negotiations that will permanently prevent tuition increases and establish a precedent of funding the UC and subsequently rolling back the tuition every year,” Gutierrez said at the meeting.Gutierrez credited the prevention of an increased tuition and the funding increase to public comment sessions, visits to budget subcommittees in Sacramento and meetings with the Department of Finance and the governor’s office. Dominick Williams, a rising senior at UC Berkeley, discussed concerns related to economic and racial diversity. He advocated for an increase in collaboration to “change the model.”“Outside of financial assistance, the No. 1 way to get students to the UC is confidence,” Williams said at the meeting. “Seeing another student from their high school with that blue and gold smile is the best way to build that confidence.”Rachel Roberson, incoming president of the UC Graduate and Professional Council and doctoral candidate in education policy and organization at UC Berkeley, spoke about issues of concern relating to UC graduate students and professionals.According to Roberson, the UC Graduate and Professional Council will work to mitigate the immigration policy threat impacting international graduate students’ careers and prioritize affordability and access to ensure “viable training for our future careers.”Roberson stated that the UC Graduate and Professional Council will be focusing primarily on issues related to Title IX.“We are both apprentices under our (principal investigators) and advisers. That interesting power dynamic is unfortunately all too ripe for being taken advantage of, and it happens far too frequently,” Roberson said at the meeting. “We also happen to be in various areas of direct service with undergraduate students. That shared trust and respect puts us in a position to hear too often the issues of violation.”

Thursday, July 19, 2018

The bill to which the item below refers seems designed by its sponsor(s) to shield state public pensions from political divestment campaigns. (There is a link to the bill below.) However, CALPERS seems to be opposing it because it would create an outside entity that might infringe on CALPERS' autonomy. The bill doesn't require UC to be involved but requests it to do so.

CalPERS fighting divestment review bill

Arleen Jacobius, 7-18-18, Pensions and Investments

CalPERS is opposing a state bill that would establish a separate body to review divestment legislation that would affect itself and CalSTRS.The bill requests the University of California establish the Pension Divestment Review Program to analyze divestment-related legislation affecting the $354.7 billion California Public Employees' Retirement System, Sacramento, and $224.9 billion California State Teachers' Retirement System, West Sacramento. The analysis would include the financial impact to the pension plans including the effect of divestment on the plans' unfunded liability.California Controller Betty Yee, who is a CalPERS and CalSTRS board member, opposes the bill. "Spending additional resources to create a (body) that will simply replicate the work of the state's pension board staff is not a productive endeavor," said a statement from Ms. Yee included in materials for CalPERS' July 16 off-site meeting."Rather, improved communications with the pension boards should provide the same information (to be sought by this bill), and in a quicker and more cost-effective fashion," the statement said.One of the CalPERS board's concerns, according to the agenda materials, is that the financial criteria established by the bill do not "address the impact of divestment proposals on the risk and volatility of the investment portfolio, which, in turn, will impact funded status, returns and retirement contribution rates for CalPERS and CalSTRS."The bill, SB 783, passed the California Senate in January and is now before the Assembly Committee on Appropriations.

As we always do, we have preserved yesterday's Regents meeting in audio format, since the Regents delete their recordings after one year. You can hear the various segments at the links below. And just below what you are reading is a summary of what took place from the Daily Cal.

Deep dives into the student experience and continued budgetary advocacy dominated discussions at Wednesday’s UC Board of Regents meeting.

Several people at public comment during the board meeting brought up figures from UC’s recently released admissions data, which showed an increase in transfers overall but a decrease in the number of transfers admitted to UC Berkeley specifically. Students also urged the regents to include students in budgetary efforts at earlier stages and emphasized taking the student experience into account.

According to UC President Janet Napolitano, the funds from the state budget — signed by Gov. Jerry Brown on June 27 — will allow the UC Office of the President, or UCOP, to recommend that in-state tuition remain flat for the upcoming academic year. Additionally, the money will be used to roll back in-state tuition by $60.

The rollback will not affect nonresident tuition, which the board voted to increase in March.

“I want to recognize our students, alumni, faculty, staff, regents and friends of the university for their tireless advocacy efforts on behalf of the UC,” Napolitano said at the meeting. “Your voices were heard and your actions made a real difference in further securing UC’s financial future.”

Outgoing UC Student Association President Judith Gutierrez and incoming Vice President of External Affairs for the ASUC of San Diego Caroline Siegel-Singh gave a presentation to the board about the importance of social media in advocacy, particularly the #FundtheUC campaign.

Gutierrez and Siegel-Singh also cited repeated student attendance at budget hearings as a key factor in persuading the legislature to increase funding. According to Singh, UC students outnumbered staff and lobbyists at most budget hearings.

“The takeaway of this presentation is to institutionalize these advocacy efforts,” Gutierrez said at the meeting. “That way, we avoid reinventing the wheel every time students take new office.”

At the morning board meeting, Napolitano said the board would discuss multiyear budgeting Thursday, which is intended to help families plan ahead and allow the regents to “look more strategically at the future of the UC.”

Planning multiple years in the future would prevent the possibility of postponing budget proposals. In a previous interview with The Daily Californian, UCOP spokesperson Stephanie Beechem confirmed that postponing the tuition vote in January also postponed the UC’s budget confirmation.

As part of former student regent Paul Monge’s effort to make the student experience more accessible to the regents, the Academic and Student Affairs Committee heard from a panel that included Chancellor Carol Christ and former ASUC external affairs vice president Rigel Robinson regarding nonresident students at UC campuses.

“To students, the message these developments send is that they aren’t welcome — that the university isn’t really interested in being a home to nonresident students, but does see the potential revenue that can be generated out of them,” said Robinson, a Missouri native, at the meeting.

Christ said that having out-of-state and international students on campus benefits in-state students, as about 80 percent of in-state UC students do not study abroad. The interaction with nonresident students, Christ noted, allows California residents to learn about diverse points of view.

In discussion, however, Regent Eloy Ortiz Oakley noted how international students’ enrollment in the UC system has increased from 5.2 percent in 2008 to 17.2 percent in 2017, yet the cost of attending a UC as an international student is three times that of a California resident student. Oakley, who is also the California Community Colleges chancellor, said at the meeting that he was concerned about the income diversity among international students.

Christ then noted that nations other than the U.S. place higher value on higher education, and that there are cases in which students from lower socioeconomic statuses receive support from their respective home nations. She also suggested that another way to support international students of poorer socioeconomic backgrounds would be to direct state funds toward financial aid for international students.

During the National Laboratories Subcommittee, members discussed the awarding of the Los Alamos National Laboratory management contract. In the morning, members from the UC Student-Workers Union protested against UC’s mishandling of sexual misconduct cases.

“We live in a global, diverse world where we must live and work with people from different places who have a wide range of perspectives and life experiences,” Christ said at the meeting.

Wednesday, July 18, 2018

Here's something to contemplate while we await today's Regents meeting.

There has been much discussion and litigation relating to paying college athletes. Josh Rosen left UCLA before graduating and is - according to the article below - involved in crafting a route around current limitations.

Meet the California Lawyer Who Has a Plan to Pay College Athletes

Forget about Condi Rice. A relatively unknown lawyer has emerged with the backing of Arizona Cardinals rookie quarterback Josh Rosen to create a new system to pay NCAA players for their names and likeness.

By Roy Strom | July 17, 2018 at 06:15 PM | The American Lawyer law.com

Jeffrey Kessler. Condoleezza Rice. Tye Gonser? There are a lot of names involved in the debate around paying college athletes. This week, a new one was added to the list, even if it is one that most won’t recognize.

Gonser, a Southern California lawyer at a 10-lawyer corporate firm that bears his name, has put forth an idea endorsed by Arizona Cardinals rookie quarterback Josh Rosen to pay student-athletes for the use of their names and likenesses. The 39-page proposal is designed to protect the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s amateur model, while promoting graduation for student-athletes.

Slickly branded “Fairplay 4 NCAA,” Gonser’s proposal creates a nonprofit, “clearinghouse” entity that will work as a go-between for student-athletes and corporate sponsors. Upon entering college, athletes will have the choice to give the would-be clearinghouse the right to negotiate sponsorship deals on their behalf with certain brands.

The clearinghouse would cut deals with sponsors and hold the sponsorship money in accounts for athletes. The money would only be doled out to players who graduate from college within eight years. Money collected for athletes who don’t graduate would be given to a general scholarship fund that supports non-athletes’ tuition and other programs to promote college attendance in poverty-stricken neighborhoods.

The plan circumvents the need for college athletes to hire agents or interact with brands, both of which have been at the epicenter of many of the recent scandals involving student-athletes finding back doors to get paid. That was a key motivator for Gonser. A former college baseball player at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania, Gonser previously worked as an in-house lawyer at a sports marketing agency and said he disliked the role money often played in recruiting athletes.

“As much as I understand about this business and this industry, I’m aware there is probably not a perfect solution, and by no means do I think this plan is perfect,” Gonser told The American Lawyer in a Tuesday interview. “Our whole goal is to present something that we think is relatively workable and can help move the conversation forward in a positive and productive manner, which we don’t think is happening to date.”

Talk of changing the NCAA’s amateur model has ramped up since last September, when the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York unveiled fraud and bribery indictments for 10 individuals working in college basketball, alleging a corruption scheme that involved coaches, agents and shoe company executives.

In response, the NCAA chartered a committee led by Rice, the former U.S. secretary of state, who put out a report in April that suggested abandoning the “one-and-done” rule forcing basketball players to attend at least one year of college before entering the annual National Basketball Association player draft. The proposal also suggested allowing more upfront interactions between college players and agents, as well as allowing those players to declare for the NBA draft and then come back to school.

The committee’s proposals were met with some criticism, mostly due to what some perceived as a muted stance toward compensating athletes for the use of their names and likenesses. Rice defended the report against that critique in a subsequent interview, saying there were pending legal challenges to the NCAA’s rules that would need to be cleared up before the commission could propose a model for how players would be paid.

“There is a legal framework that has to be determined, but name, image and likeness—athletes are going to have to be able to benefit from it,” Rice told USA Today.

The most pressing legal challenge on that front is being led by Winston & Strawn partner Jeffrey Kessler, a veteran litigator who also serves co-executive chairman of the firm.

That case, a multidistrict litigation being heard in the U.S. District Court for Northern District of California, is an antitrust challenge to the NCAA’s restriction on payments of athletes. The suit depicts the scholarship process as an unfair cap on wages; an issue set for a bench trial later this year before U.S. District Judge Claudia Wilken. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, which NCAA tax records show received nearly $5.9 million from the registered nonprofit in 2015-16, is representing the organization in that case. (Former White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, now co-chair of the white-collar defense and investigations practice at Latham & Watkins, which received nearly $7.3 million from the NCAA in 2015-16, is a member of the NCAA committee on basketball reform.)

Gonser said that suit before Wilken may threaten the NCAA’s longtime amateur model and encourage some schools not to offer scholarship-level sports.

“I think they could frankly win, but it would also ruin college sports,” Gonser said. “A lot of the best institutions in the country would probably say they won’t do it, and they’ll just have club sports.”

Gonser said his plan could be easier for the NCAA to swallow because it would benefit all parties involved: the NCAA, schools and players. The revenues Gonser envisions his system bringing about could be from a rebirth of college video games and from individual licensing deals for stars.

That money would be split up differently depending on the type of sponsorship deal. For broad group licensing agreements, a “player pool” of all the players of any sport would receive 50 percent of the revenue; the clearinghouse takes 25 percent; the NCAA gets 15 percent; and the general scholarship fund gets 10 percent. Individual deals send 50 percent of the money to the individual athlete; 25 percent to the clearinghouse; 10 percent to the NCAA; 10 percent to the player pool; and 10 percent to the scholarship fund.

Gonser said he went public with the proposal after finding hesitation among the NCAA’s vested interests to his pitch through more regular channels. He said he had spoken with athletic directors in four of the five collegiate power conferences. They were interested in the idea, but none were supportive enough to sponsor it as a legitimate challenge to current NCAA rules. Gonser now hopes public support and pressure may motivate them to act.

“It just feels like nobody wants to be the person who stands up first in that world and be the champion behind it, which I understand,” Gonser said. “Unfortunately, the NCAA tends to be a very reactive institution.”

Gonser said he worked on his proposal on Sundays when he wasn’t doing his typical legal work: representing business owners who often happen to be professional athletes. Frustrated at the slow pace of his proposal, he hired an intern, then-University of Southern California Gould School of Law student Bryan Bitzer, who is set to take a first-year lawyer job at Los Angeles-based Weinberg Gonser in August.

As for Rosen’s involvement, Gonser said he was introduced to the former University of California, Los Angeles star when Rosen was a freshman at the school. Gonser’s office is close to the UCLA campus and he said he became something of a mentor to the controversial Rosen.The two men began talking early last year about challenges to the NCAA amateur model, possibly sparked by a decision Rosen had to make: whether to forego his senior year at UCLA or become eligible for the NFL draft. The Cardinals eventually drafted Rosen with the 10th overall selection in late April. Had Gonser’s system been in place during Rosen’s college career, Gonser said the star quarterback may have stayed for his senior year.“He’s wildly intelligent,” Gonser said. “But what really drew me to him as we built a relationship was that he really cares about people and social issues in a way that I don’t see many people in general do; especially not 20-year-olds.”

Tuesday, July 17, 2018

Entering its final meeting of the summer, the UC Board of Regents will have had five vacancies for about three months, after two term-outs, two resignations and one death.Usually, there are only two vacancies, which are due to regents reaching the end of their terms, according to Student Regent Devon Graves, and this year was former regents William De La Peña and Bruce Varner’s turn. The death of Bonnie Reiss earlier this year and the resignations of Norman Pattiz and Monica Lozano have raised the number of vacancies up to five, the highest since 2013.“We have to look at the positive side, that there are going to be five new regents,” Graves said. “It is an opportunity to bring in new perspectives.”There is no strict timeline for when the governor must appoint regents for their 12-year terms, but Gov. Jerry Brown met with an advisory committee in April — the first time a governor had met with the committee in 17 years — to help him choose new regents.No appointments have been announced as of press time, and there are no appointments on this week’s Board of Regents meeting agenda...

Monday, July 16, 2018

The University of California Regents will vote on a $60 undergraduate tuition rollback at their upcoming meeting on July 19.

The $60 undergraduate tuition surcharge was originally added in 2007 as a result of the UC system losing two class action lawsuits. After the UC system increased fees for professional students in 2003 despite their contracts stating there would be no increases, the UC system was made to pay $40 million in settlements. According to the July 19 meeting proposal, all of the losses from the lawsuits will be recovered by Fall 2018, so there is no longer a need for the fee...

We now learn how the Bruin editorial board feels about the new campus climate phone app:*

UCLA’s approach to assessing campus climate seems to consist of little more than Venn diagrams and an iPhone X.

The Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion’s research and development branch, BruinX, recently finished beta testing a mobile app aimed at better gauging campus climate. The app, BruinXperience, will roll out in fall quarter and remind students to complete a survey every two weeks, so as to give frequent data to researchers.

The goal is ambitious and the intent admirable. But the app’s faulty design fails to take into consideration the students it will survey, and only further highlights how detached the administration has become from the campus community.

In order for any conclusions to be meaningful, the app will depend on regular engagement from a large number of students. But UCLA has done little to motivate participation beyond raffling off a new iPhone X.

Such lazy methods of engagement demonstrate how little administrators know about their students. UCLA professors and teaching assistants are barely able to persuade students to fill out just one end-of-the-quarter evaluation, sometimes even when they factor it into students’ grades. A slim chance at winning a new smartphone is unlikely to encourage regular participation from students.

Administrators have said the new app is not meant to replace any current structure for surveying campus climate, and act as a source for additional data the university can base decisions off.

But it doesn’t take an expert in statistics to recognize the glaring holes in their approach. By not controlling for the demographics of students who they actually gather data from and relying on voluntary participation, administrators could wind up with a pool of participants that isn’t representative of the campus as a whole.

For starters, the survey answers would suffer from volunteer bias, where answers would be skewed in a particular fashion given the subset of students who would bother to answer are either curious students or those in tune with the administration’s plans.

Moreover, the app stands to give little insightful data at all. Its current format involves answering merely two simple questions. The first one presents the user with six Venn diagrams to choose from to show how synced with the UCLA community they feel. The next question asks the user to explain their choice for the first question.

This approach to getting the campus’ pulse is laughable. Just asking students how much they feel part of the university community is unlikely to elicit useful information about campus climate, especially when asked in such a simplistic format. On top of that, it does little to probe into the discord the campus faces when controversial events take place, be they the inviting of alt-right speakers or divisive student government elections – events the administration should seek to understand through a data-driven approach, not through having students choose between low-quality blue and yellow pictures on an app.

There’s certainly potential if UCLA takes a more active approach in reaching out to a representative group of students on a regular basis and catering questions to their personal experiences.

But implementing an effective program would require administrators to realize students are more than just individuals who would mindlessly fill out a survey every two weeks for a chance to win an iPhone X. Rather, students are a complex population with varying experiences and viewpoints on the campus.

Saturday, July 14, 2018

We always like to salute successful fundraising that doesn't involve tearing down buildings to put up new ones and that focuses on research and teaching. Here is one such effort:

A $5 million gift to the UCLA Samueli School of Engineering in honor of internet pioneer Leonard Kleinrock will establish a new center devoted to shaping the future of the internet and computer networking. The gift from Sunday Group Inc., a Las Vegas-based software company specializing in blockchain technology, will create the UCLA Connection Lab.

Kleinrock, a UCLA distinguished professor of computer science who established the underpinning framework of the internet in the 1960s, will lead the new center.

The Connection Lab will foster interdisciplinary research on a range of technologies, such as blockchain (secure records of digital transactions), computer networks, big data, artificial intelligence, machine learning and the “internet of things.” It will draw inspiration from the school’s foundational role as the birthplace of the internet.

The gift will provide resources to recruit and retain top faculty at the lab and will support research conducted by undergraduates, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. It also will facilitate startups by seeding priority research and connecting members of the lab with industry and government leaders.

“It’s impossible today to consider a world without the internet — this global nervous system plays a major role in every facet of modern society — but indeed that’s where we were before Professor Kleinrock and his team laid the first cornerstone of this network of networks at UCLA,” said James Pack, a director and co-founder of Sunday Group. “Nearly 50 years after that landmark work, we are very excited to see UCLA continue its lead role in the study of emerging connections technologies.”

While a graduate student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the early 1960s, Kleinrock created the mathematical theory of packet switching, which allows different computers to communicate with each other. Five years later, as a UCLA professor, he was asked by the Advanced Research Projects Agency (which later become Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA) to put his theory into practice.

Kleinrock, with a team of select graduate students and others, then launched the network now known as the internet. At 10:30 p.m. on Oct. 29, 1969, the first message on the network was sent from his UCLA laboratory to Stanford Research Institute. Now known as one of the fathers of the internet, Kleinrock has been recognized with many distinguished international honors for his work, including the National Medal of Science, the United States’ highest honor for achievement in the sciences.

“The UCLA Connection Lab is designed to provide an environment that will foster advanced research in innovative technologies at the forefront of all things regarding connectivity and will deliver the benefits from that research to society globally,” Kleinrock said. “The lab’s broad-based agenda will enable faculty, students and visitors to pursue research challenges of their own choosing, without externally imposed constraints on scope or risk.”

The gift will also enhance the Internet Experience, a permanent exhibition that is open to the public. After a renovation, the center — which is located in in 3420 Boelter Hall, the site of Kleinrock’s research laboratory in the 1960s — will tell the story of the internet’s evolution through new exhibits, interactive displays and a virtual reality experience that will be accessible online, around the world.

“Simply put, Professor Kleinrock’s work was essential in giving the world the internet, which has revolutionized our lives,” said Todd Mitsuishi, CEO and co-founder of Sunday Group. “The creation of the UCLA Connection Lab will play an important role in continuing his legacy, and Sunday Group is honored and proud to play a small part in this endeavor.”

Jayathi Murthy, the Ronald and Valerie Sugar Dean of Engineering, said, “I want to thank the Sunday Group for their visionary support​ of​ UCLA​, and of Professor Kleinrock’s exploration ​of ​what the internet can and should be. Len’s leadership ​brings​ an unmatched level of knowledge and scholarship ​to ​this important endeavor. The UCLA Connection Lab will ​help ensure the continued excellence of ​our research enterprise for years to come.”

The gift is part of the $4.2 billion UCLA Centennial Campaign, which is scheduled to conclude in December 2019 during UCLA’s 100th anniversary year. The gift also moves UCLA Samueli Engineering closer to its own campaign goal of $250 million.

The University of California announced today (July 11) that it has offered nearly 137,000 students a spot on at least one of its nine undergraduate campuses this fall, including more than 28,750 transfer applicants, the highest number in the history of the university.California residents make up the vast majority of those admitted, 71,086 as freshmen and 24,568 as transfer students. Overall, this represents 1,114 more California freshmen and 1,851 more California transfers than were admitted last year. Almost all of the transfers were from the California Community Colleges.“After reviewing yet another record-breaking number of applications, our campuses have offered admission to an exceptionally talented group of students for the upcoming academic year,” said UC President Janet Napolitano. “With the benefit of a UC education, these accomplished young people from different backgrounds, with diverse beliefs and aspirations, will make California and the world a better place. We look forward to having them at the university.”More California undergraduates are currently enrolled at UC than at any point in its history, and after last year’s enrollment jump of some 5,000 California students, the university anticipates it will have far surpassed its goal of adding an additional 10,000 Californians by the 2018-19 academic year. Total three-year growth is estimated to be an additional 15,000 California resident undergraduates.As part of the university’s effort to effectively manage enrollment growth, this year not every campus increased its admissions offers over last year. Based on preliminary reports of students’ intention to register, however, indications are that the number of new California freshman and transfer students who will enroll at UC in the fall, what is known as “yield,” will increase by more than 3,000 over 2017.In keeping with the recently enacted caps on nonresident enrollment at all of the campuses, 17,863 domestic and 19,069 international freshmen were also offered admission for the fall. Nonresident students typically accept UC admissions offers at a much lower rate than do Californians.“University admissions is part science, part art and part experience,” said Vice President for Student Affairs Robin Holmes-Sullivan. “High admissions numbers don’t automatically translate to high enrollment. The data we have available today give us great confidence in predicting that our actual fall enrollment will exceed our goal. We are gratified that so many of these top-notch, motivated students are eager to attend UC.”The preliminary admissions numbers show increases in offers to students from historically underrepresented groups and among California freshmen and transfers who would be the first in their families to graduate from a four-year college, with first-generation students comprising 46 percent of the total.Among freshman applicants, Asian American students remained the largest ethnic group admitted at 36 percent, followed by Latinos at 33 percent, whites at 22 percent and African Americans at 5 percent. American Indians, Pacific Islanders and applicants who did not report a race or ethnicity made up the remainder of admitted students.Admission of California Community College transfer students grew by 8 percent over fall 2017, and is in keeping with UC’s goal of enrolling one new California resident transfer student for every two new California resident freshmen.UC’s current transfer student enrollment is at an all-time high and will likely continue to grow. UC recently announced a plan to guarantee transfers to a UC campus for students who achieve the requisite GPA and complete one of 21 “pathways,” or prerequisite classes for the most popular UC majors. These guarantees will be in place for students beginning community college in fall 2019.This year’s proportion of transfer students who were admitted from historically underrepresented groups jumped to 38 percent. Latino students were the largest ethnic group at just under 32 percent, followed closely by white students at 31 percent and Asian Americans at 27 percent. African Americans represented 6 percent of the admitted transfer students, while American Indians and Pacific Islanders made up less than 1 percent of the admitted transfer students.The preliminary data released today includes applicants admitted from waitlists and through the referral pool. The data tables, which include campus-specific information for both freshmen and transfers, may be accessed here:https://www.ucop.edu/institutional-research-academic-planning/content-analysis/ug-admissions/ug-pages/2018-admissions.html

Wednesday, July 11, 2018

The state controller has released the cash report
for the past fiscal year 2017-18. There is good news and bad news. The good
news is that revenues were up about $1.5 billion relative to the projections
made in June 2017 (when the 2017-18 budget was enacted). The bad news is that the
extra money came mainly from the personal income tax (which probably means a
big capital gains component) and the corporate tax (profits). Sales tax revenue
- which is a proxy for consumption and much of the economic activity of the
state came in below budget projections and, indeed, below last year's figure.
So the good revenue news was likely from the most volatile component of revenue
that can drop off precipitously in any kind of downturn.

Of course, there is no sign of a downturn currently,
despite the turmoil about tariffs and such. And the state has access not only
to its official general fund reserves - including the governor's rainy day fund - but also to cash sitting in other accounts of the state outside the general fund. So-called
unused borrowable reserves are close to $40 billion, which is a significant
cushion.

From the Bruin: UCLA researchers will launch a new app that aims to better understand the campus climate, which includes a variety of factors that contribute to students’ experience at UCLA.

BruinX, the research and development branch of the Office of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, finished beta testing their new app, BruinXperience, last month. UCLA undergraduate and graduate students can start using the app fall quarter.

The app will remind students every two weeks to complete a two-item survey which asks them to select a picture that best describes how they feel at that moment, then provides a text box for them to explain their choice.

Carli Straight, a research scientist for BruinX, said collecting survey responses more frequently will be advantageous because students can remember recent personal events more accurately.

Data can also be collected in closer proximity to specific events to observe how opinions change before and after the event.

She added that the app allows students to directly tell administrative officials about what affects their experience on campus.

“We not only ask students to report how they feel but why they feel the way they do, giving them the platform to tell us, in their own words, what affects them,” Straight said.

Lauren Ilano, a research analyst at Student Affairs Information and Research Office, said she thinks collecting data more frequently could help improve programs that use campus climate data.

“Having more campus climate data collected at closer intervals could potentially help departments make adjustments to their programming,” Ilano said. “Campus climate issues are extremely important and having more regular data is one way to assess initiatives in real time.”

Lena Nguyen, a rising second-year political science and pre-communication student, said she thinks BruinXperience will make the campus climate survey process more convenient for students.

“(Past campus climate surveys) just never came up,” Nguyen said. “But I would do it if I saw it online or on my phone because it’s faster.”

Straight also said that BruinXperience will not replace existing survey infrastructure, which includes traditional, more in-depth quarterly surveys.

“Information collected from both short-interval and annual surveys will contribute to a more complete understanding of students’ perceptions of campus climate,” she said.